John Galsworthy - The Freelands

It was beautiful there, too, with the bright open fields hedged with great elms, and that ever-rich serenity of its grass and trees. The white house, timbered with dark beams in true Worcestershire fashion, and added-to from time to time, had preserved, thanks to a fine architect, an old-fashioned air of spacious presidency above its gardens and lawns. On the long artificial lake, with innumerable rushy nooks and water-lilies and coverture of leaves floating flat and bright in the sun, the half-tame wild duck and shy water-hens had remote little worlds, and flew and splashed when all Becket was abed, quite as if the human spirit, with its monkey-tricks and its little divine flame, had not yet been born.

Under the shade of a copper-beech, just where the drive cut through into its circle before the house, an old lady was sitting that afternoon on a campstool. She was dressed in gray alpaca, light and cool, and had on her iron-gray hair a piece of black lace. A number of Hearth and Home and a little pair of scissors, suspended by an inexpensive chain from her waist, rested on her knee, for she had been meaning to cut out for dear Felix a certain recipe for keeping the head cool; but, as a fact, she sat without doing so, very still, save that, now and then, she compressed her pale fine lips, and continually moved her pale fine hands. She was evidently waiting for something that promised excitement, even pleasure, for a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up into a face that was colored like parchment; and her gray eyes under regular and still-dark brows, very far apart, between which there was no semblance of a wrinkle, seemed noting little definite things about her, almost unwillingly, as an Arab’s or a Red Indian’s eyes will continue to note things in the present, however their minds may be set on the future. So sat Frances Fleeming Freeland (nee Morton) waiting for the arrival of her son Felix and her grandchildren Alan and Nedda.

She marked presently an old man limping slowly on a stick toward where the drive debouched, and thought at once: “He oughtn’t to be coming this way. I expect he doesn’t know the way round to the back. Poor man, he’s very lame. He looks respectable, too.” She got up and went toward him, remarking that his face with nice gray moustaches was wonderfully regular, almost like a gentleman’s, and that he touched his dusty hat with quite old-fashioned courtesy. And smiling – her smile was sweet but critical – she said: “You’ll find the best way is to go back to that little path, and past the greenhouses. Have you hurt your leg?”

“My leg’s been like that, m’m, fifteen year come Michaelmas.”

“How did it happen?”

“Ploughin’. The bone was injured; an’ now they say the muscle’s dried up in a manner of speakin’.”

“What do you do for it? The very best thing is this.”

From the recesses of a deep pocket, placed where no one else wore such a thing, she brought out a little pot.

“You must let me give it you. Put it on when you go to bed, and rub it well in; you’ll find it act splendidly.”

The old man took the little pot with dubious reverence.

“Yes, m’m,” he said; “thank you, m’m.”

“What is your name?”

“Gaunt.”

“And where do you live?”

“Over to Joyfields, m’m.”

“Joyfields – another of my sons lives there – Mr. Morton Freeland. But it’s seven miles.”

“I got a lift half-way.”

“And have you business at the house?” The old man was silent; the downcast, rather cynical look of his lined face deepened. And Frances Freeland thought: ‘He’s overtired. They must give him some tea and an egg. What can he want, coming all this way? He’s evidently not a beggar.’

The old man who was not a beggar spoke suddenly:

“I know the Mr. Freeland at Joyfields. He’s a good gentleman, too.”

“Yes, he is. I wonder I don’t know you.”

“I’m not much about, owin’ to my leg. It’s my grand-daughter in service here, I come to see.”

“Oh, yes! What is her name?”

“Gaunt her name is.”

“I shouldn’t know her by her surname.”

“Alice.”

“Ah! in the kitchen; a nice, pretty girl. I hope you’re not in trouble.”

Again the old man was silent, and again spoke suddenly:

“That’s as you look at it, m’m,” he said. “I’ve got a matter of a few words to have with her about the family. Her father he couldn’t come, so I come instead.”

“And how are you going to get back?”

“I’ll have to walk, I expect, without I can pick up with a cart.”

Frances Freeland compressed her lips. “With that leg you should have come by train.”

The old man smiled.

“I hadn’t the fare like,” he said. “I only gets five shillin’s a week, from the council, and two o’ that I pays over to my son.”

Frances Freeland thrust her hand once more into that deep pocket, and as she did so she noticed that the old man’s left boot was flapping open, and that there were two buttons off his coat. Her mind was swiftly calculating: “It is more than seven weeks to quarter day. Of course I can’t afford it, but I must just give him a sovereign.”

She withdrew her hand from the recesses of her pocket and looked at the old man’s nose. It was finely chiselled, and the same yellow as his face. “It looks nice, and quite sober,” she thought. In her hand was her purse and a boot-lace. She took out a sovereign.

“Now, if I give you this,” she said, “you must promise me not to spend any of it in the public-house. And this is for your boot. And you must go back by train. And get those buttons sewn on your coat. And tell cook, from me, please, to give you some tea and an egg.” And noticing that he took the sovereign and the boot-lace very respectfully, and seemed altogether very respectable, and not at all coarse or beery-looking, she said:

“Good-by; don’t forget to rub what I gave you into your leg every night and every morning,” and went back to her camp-stool. Sitting down on it with the scissors in her hand, she still did not cut out that recipe, but remained as before, taking in small, definite things, and feeling with an inner trembling that dear Felix and Alan and Nedda would soon be here; and the little flush rose again in her cheeks, and again her lips and hands moved, expressing and compressing what was in her heart. And close behind her, a peacock, straying from the foundations of the old Moreton house, uttered a cry, and moved slowly, spreading its tail under the low-hanging boughs of the copper-beeches, as though it knew those dark burnished leaves were the proper setting for its ‘parlant’ magnificence.

The day after the little conference at John’s, Felix had indeed received the following note:

“DEAR FELIX:

“When you go down to see old Tod, why not put up with us at Becket? Any time will suit, and the car can take you over to Joyfields when you like. Give the pen a rest. Clara joins in hoping you’ll come, and Mother is still here. No use, I suppose, to ask Flora.

“Yours ever,

“STANLEY.”

During the twenty years of his brother’s sojourn there Felix had been down to Becket perhaps once a year, and latterly alone; for Flora, having accompanied him the first few times, had taken a firm stand.

“My dear,” she said, “I feel all body there.”

Felix had rejoined:

“No bad thing, once in a way.”

But Flora had remained firm. Life was too short! She did not get on well with Clara. Neither did Felix feel too happy in his sister-in-law’s presence; but the gray top-hat instinct had kept him going there, for one ought to keep in touch with one’s brothers.

He replied to Stanley:

“DEAR STANLEY: